“Let me tell you a little story,” Mr. Biden told the crowd at the University of Iowa. “I got elected (in 1972) when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th. And on Dec. 18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time permanent, fundamental injuries.”
Babies know best: Check out this Christian Science Monitor story about a Yale study on infant development. Fascinating grafs:
The study released last month presented babies with a diorama-like display of an anthropomorphic circle struggling to make it up a hill. Just when it appeared that all hope was lost, a heroic triangle appeared, and pushed the circle to the top. The round climber bounces, clearly elated to have reached the summit. The same scenario is played out again, only this time a square appears at the top of the hill and pushes the circle to the bottom.
The babies were then asked to pick a toy – the helper or the hinderer, as scientists called them. One hundred percent of 6-month-olds and 87.5 percent of 10-month-olds chose the helper. The results were consistent even when the triangle and the square swapped places as good guy and bad guy. In several other iterations of the experiment, the helper, regardless of shape or color, won out.
Failure is not an option: Students at Central Park East High School in East Harlem, N.Y. are not doing well. Many are failing. The solution? Dumb it down. As WCBS reports:
Last month, Principal Bennett Lieberman sent off a stern memo to teachers.
"If you are not passing more than 65 percent of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities, and you are setting your students up for failure, which, in turn, limits your success as a professional."
2 comments:
Lowering the standards are not done in business so their claim of "limiting success as a professional" if they fail on the higher standards is completely misguided.
Once again, it shows what happens to an institution once Washington takes over and calls the shots.
Two things need to happen to improve education.
First, return the schools back to the states and dissolve the Department of Education.
Second, run the damned teacher unions out of the classrooms and the school districts.
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